


Conditions

by bee_bro



Category: HLVRAI - Fandom, Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware
Genre: Black Mesa Sweet Voice, Cuddling, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Fluff, Forgiveness, Kidfic, Love Confessions, M/M, Not A Game AU, On The Fence About Each Other To Friends To Lovers, Pining, Post-Canon, Sharing a Bed, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Touch-Starved, as the comments suggest..., benrey steals gordon's clothes and heart, cause joshua!, gordon is too kind and caring for this world, sfw, t for language, that one cliche of benrey being in his helmet all the time until he Isnt, this directly causes benrey gay distress and the f word (feelings)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:16:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27212551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bee_bro/pseuds/bee_bro
Summary: Sometimes the 'person' you were most anxious about letting into your home ends up being the reason your mental health and livelihood improve tenfold, and that's that.or, what the fuck, ga y lieeltle roommates
Relationships: Benrey/Gordon Freeman
Comments: 122
Kudos: 591





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> well hello HELLO i am back at ignoring my WIPs and being unable to stop writing this basically

There are strict, unmoving conditions behind why Gordon lets Benrey into his house at all. Conditions like _no weird alien shit_ and _don’t look through my drawers_ and _stay away from the kitchen_. And many more, all sorts of rules that basically leave Benrey with free range to only the couch and the bathroom, because Gordon wants to keep him almost always accounted for. Lest he… do something. Gordon doesn’t know _what,_ seeing as Benrey seems rather exhausted from “coming back”, resigned to either sleeping through half the day – and hogging the couch in the process – or playing on his Switch.

It’d been one of the only belongings to Benrey’s person, aside from a replacement helmet, one of those hotel toothbrush kits, and, rather inexplicably, a copy of the ugly duckling. Gordon avoids him most of the time, but three days into seeing Benrey slowly kill his posture on the couch, wearing the same shirt, Gordon caves and drags him shopping.

He works from home now, on a loose schedule to boot: designing a whole new study curriculum for Black Mesa’s superlatives on…various safety hazards they’d encountered after the meltdown as well as life forms. Tommy and Dr. Coomer are also working on it in exchange for relative freedom, governmental secrecy, and steady pay on top of the hush money. Gordon doesn’t like it _too_ much, the idea of working for anything Black Mesa related putting a bad taste in his mouth, but it’s something to do and it helps him compartmentalize his thoughts, methodically re-working through their journey with Tommy and Coomer on-call. All three omit Benrey from their reports.

And so, Gordon picks a time the mall is least likely to be crowded, and takes Benrey to Walmart for lack of actually caring. The walk there is awkward, but after he has to drag Benrey away from a Gamestop display window, Benrey immediately breaks into a barely sensical rant about old sports games being much more playable than the trash they release right now, falling into step next to Gordon. Having Benrey studiously walk next to him and talk puts Gordon on edge for a few minutes, he keeps waiting for- for Benrey to ask about his ID again or to get in the way- and it for a moment feels like he’s back in the corridors of a science facility-

But they’re outside, summer’s fading warmth lighting the street up with rays of sun. Benrey’s still in a helmet, only now wearing one of Gordon’s corporate-event-provided shirts (his button-up had been deemed unfit for public eye), and he’s still a bit faded and sluggish, but he’s simply following along, no longer complaining about being forced outside.

Gordon lets Benrey run rampant through the clothes sections, before having to reselect everything he’d picked, because apparently Benrey just grabbed the first thing he liked and never checked for size. They settle on a pair of soft knee-length shorts (pumpkin print) and a couple of various shitty graphic tees. On the way to the cashiers, they pass the shoe and hat sections, and Gordon momentarily thinks Benrey might need… shoes that aren’t Mesa-assigned loafers, but that can wait. He’s already spending money on the guy as it is. God, he’s not even sure Benrey can get hired anywhere… Does he even have…. Does- and this is almost funny in its irony – does he even have human credentials? To work?

He considers asking Benrey for his passport later, but thinks better of it, sending Benrey to shower at home as he vacuums down the couch.

There’s still fuckall information about what Benrey is and about what his coexistence entails, but one of the only established points Gordon had managed to whittle out of an uncooperative Benrey, was that Benrey didn’t really need to eat. He’d never seen him eat at Black Mesa and he’s never seen him eat on the couch, so Gordon takes it at face value and doesn’t look into it at all.

So, four days in, when Gordon’s finally got enough energy in him to actually cook dinner instead of getting his sad one-man’s-take-out, it’s rather surprising to find Benrey’s attention locked directly on the kitchen. The kitchen is visible from the couch, and Gordon’s only cracked the eggs to fry, when there’s a snap of motion in his periphery. He flinches, dodging his eyes over, but instead of any malicious intent, he finds Benrey sitting up and staring at the sizzling pan with a strange sort of intensity. He stops after he notices Gordon watching, and goes back to staring at a screen, and Gordon supposes the sound was just startling. And yet, over the next ten minutes, he catches repeated instances of Benrey trying not to stare at the eggs and failing miserably.

For all his stubbornness over having to house Benrey, Gordon is, at the end of the day, a dad. And he can’t cook himself, and only himself, dinner when there’s someone in the living room trying not to drool at the smell. Gordon sighs and cracks more eggs onto the pan, as well as pulling bacon out of the fridge for good measure.

He turns the heat down and catches Benrey staring _again,_ “Yo, Benrey?”

“W- yuh?” Benrey manages to tear his eyes away from the kitchen stove to instead look at Gordon, “Br?”

“I made dinner.” There’s no comprehension in Benrey’s eyes, and so Gordon sighs and elaborates, “For you too. C’mere.”

He’s not sure he’s ever seen anyone eat so quickly. Benrey sits at the kitchen counter criss-cross-applesauce and tears into the eggs and bacon, occasionally taking a dangerous gulp of the provided orange juice. Gordon realizes he himself is barely eating, mesmerized by the sight more than anything. It’s both weird to see Benrey eat anything for the first time, but whoever cooks someone else food, and says they don’t feel _something_ when that food is obviously appreciated, is lying.

This is how they find out Benrey does indeed need to eat. This also seems to fix his low-energy moping and… maybe lift the rule about Benrey being not allowed in the kitchen. Strangely enough, even though Gordon would pin Benrey for a pizza and delivery kind of guy, every time Gordon even so much as walks into the kitchen around dinner-time, he can practically feel Benrey’s eyes bore into him, waiting to see if Gordon’s planning on making something. And it… it helps get him back into the feel of cooking dinners almost every night because there’s almost tangible disappointment in the living room if Gordon leaves the kitchen with only a glass of water and without starting to cook up an ‘epic gamer home meal’.

He knows he’ll eventually start taking Joshie back in again, but he’s still got nightmares and Katelyn has agreed to keep Joshie for a bit longer- let him recuperate, let him fix himself before he’s tasked with another dependent human being.

As Gordon minces up garlic cloves for the pesto sauce, he supposes that, technically, he’s already _been_ tasked with another dependent… _being_ to live with. Katelyn doesn’t know, and every day that passes without him telling her, he stresses more and more about how he’ll break the news that Joshie might have to come live in a house with…. Benrey.

Gordon frowns down at his prosthetic as it slips on the knife a bit. On second thought, who said he’d be bringing Joshie in to meet Benrey ever. It’s easier to get Benrey _out_ than somehow make Benrey kid-proof. Gordon adds another point to the list of conditions: no meetings with Joshua. His prosthetic slips again and he _knows_ he should be paying more attention, but damn it he’s right, Benrey’s been pretty goddamn useless even though Gordon knows him fully capable of being a serious adult.

He calls Benrey over to help with the garlic cloves, and Benrey pauses for a second at the threshold to the kitchen before crossing, rolling up his sleeves and asking in familiar, lulling monotone, “What’s popping for dinner tonight?”

They cook side by side and Gordon gives him some of the more… methodic and simplistic tasks, but Benrey doesn’t really give reason to be mistrusted. Maybe his cutting isn’t that small or he adds the tomatoes in too early and they splash hot oil droplets everywhere, but he also snorts at dry pasta forming a little face as he drops a few pieces of it onto the counter, and when Gordon looks over, he chuckles and carries on.

He starts making Benrey help cook about twice a week then. And yet, every time he calls Benrey’s name, he’s ready to hear a _not now_ or a _bugger off, you can do it on your own, you baby._ Cause it’s almost always an interruption to Benrey’s game or Benrey’s nap or _something,_ and Gordon’s waiting for him to finally stop being nice when pushed too far-

And then on a day he wasn’t planning to force Benrey into cooking, Benrey drifts over into the kitchen anyway, hovering over Gordon’s shoulder for a moment, before asking if he can do anything.

He starts helping to cook every day.

It helps, it certainly helps, and they can finish cooking faster, yet Benrey also makes more of a mess, but as time goes on, he livens up a bit, jabs at Gordon a bit more, threatens to eat cinnamon. It gets actual laughter out of Gordon at times and he _knows_ he’s not immune to Benrey’ dumb fucking incoherent humor, and yet almost each joke catches him off guard. Because it’s coming from a relaxed Benrey at his side in a soft tee and his shorts and mismatched socks they’d bought recently- or sometimes in Gordon’s borrowed sweatpants as the days get colder, still in that helmet but honestly it’s just a natural part of looking at Benrey now- and yeah, it’s worth the extra mess in the kitchen.

And they start eating on the couch more, finding something to watch either for the fact it’s obviously bad or with genuine interest – the latter happens on accident sometimes, finding movies that are surprisingly good amidst the scroll of Netflix. Benrey has an uncanny ability to retain insane amounts of the most useless knowledge, and puts it to good use with the movies they pick, constantly quoting only the worst lines back at Gordon the next day. Some stick around for longer, and Gordon realizes they’re slowly building a bank of inside jokes. He supposes it comes with living in close quarters – god, it’s almost been a month – but it’s nice, it’s nice to have a weird little language of references.

It’s also absolutely deadly for Gordon as he starts bringing Benrey with him places more- even places he’d usually pass up and skip out on. There’s a little private-owned café down their street that Gordon helped renovate and therefore gets lifelong discounts at, and they start going there some mornings, Benrey quickly abandoning all complaint at this and gladly accepting a hoodie from Gordon’s closet before they depart – Gordon really needs to buy him some warmer clothes as it starts to get chilly, but he keeps forgetting to. And they’ll sit in the café and Benrey will say something real quietly, still even-toned in his delivery, but he’ll be smiling, just that one bit, and it’ll be some dumb joke but Gordon will accidentally snort coffee up his nose and spend the next ten minutes batting off Benrey’s hands and telling him he’s fine.

They have Tommy over for movie night and order pizza, make popcorn, drag over every blanket Gordon owns, but the couch is kind of small for three people, so Benrey slinks down onto the ground and sits with his back against it, incidentally ending up bracketed by Gordon’s legs. Gordon doesn’t even register it until they’re ten minutes into clowning an Adam Sanders film, when he finds that he’d settles his hands pretty comfortably on Benrey’s helmet. He drums his fingers a bit and feels Benrey relax against his calf, leaning back more.

Tommy and Gordon end up so severely weirded out by the film’s dated jokes and not even clownable content that the movie’s turned off, replaced soon by a shitty looking space-drama, that they then spend over an hour tearing apart for its rather _bad_ science. Benrey snorts occasionally, but as they wave Tommy goodbye at the end of the night, even feeling tired from so much high-frequency communication at a late hour, Gordon catches Benrey by the shoulder and asks him if everything’s alright.

“Yeah bro, what wouldn’t be?” Benrey looks at him with similarly tired eyes and smiles without his heart in it, and Gordon tells him he’s been weirdly quiet today…

It takes ten minutes of just standing in the kitchen, waiting for Benrey to finally spit it out, before the answer’s revealed, “I miss space.”

He takes Benrey to an observatory and space museum. He doesn’t know how this comes about, he just falls asleep that movie night with a concrete plan in his mind: to bring Benrey there. And it just kind of goes from there, until two days later they’re standing under a tall dome ceiling of simulated stars. It’d been a surprise for Benrey, all under the guise of picking up some boxes from an old friend’s house or something- and then Gordon convinced him to keep his eyes closed until told otherwise, dragging Benrey into the huge domed room by the hand…

And Benrey stares up, head tipped back and eyes wide and helmet dancing with the lights, and Gordon doesn’t really care for the stars, he’d taken Joshua here a bunch of times before, so he just looks at Benrey and marvels at the genuine sense of awe on his face. And then Benrey looking over at him, clasping one hand over his own mouth and grabbing Gordon’s hand with the other, and dragging him into a staff-adjacent hallway that’s similarly dimly lit, and Gordon’s about to ask what the hell is going on, but Benrey finally lets go of his mouth and lets out a trail of luminescent sweet voice he’d been trying to keep back.

Gordon’s almost forgotten about it, but the pleasant glow of the lights has never failed to be almost hypnotizing and equally enamoring, and he grins back as Benrey can’t seem to stop, still squeezing Gordon’s hand and trying to smile through the song. It ends in blue and Gordon can swear it must mean something along the lines of _thank you_ and he grins even harder, pulling Benrey into an impulsive hug. This lays a stop to the no weird alien shit rule.

Allowing sweet voice in the house – and all other sorts of weird shit like noclipping through corners to take shortcuts and sometimes phasing a hand into the actual couch cushions to search for the remote – is like a floodgate being open.

Benrey will direct a smaller wave of orbs at Gordon as he walks by sometimes, if to annoy him or interact with him is a mystery, but Gordon finds himself strangely attuned to it. Attuned to hearing the song of it lilting into the kitchen as he putters around for coffee in the mornings they stay home. Attuned to Benrey letting them roll out of his mouth when he laughs at a bad movie. They begin to exist as part of the many things that come with living with Benrey and that’s okay.

They’ll both listen to songs off Gordon’s spotify (endlessly bullied by Benrey) and he’ll hear Benrey harmonize with it, only to look over and see orbs bopping up to the ceiling in gradients. He can’t help but find it calming, like the nightlight he keeps around when the darkness lasts too long.

And it lasts longer now, the days growing short with the onset of autumn, and Gordon knows he can’t stop putting off the rather mandatory shopping trip. Clothes and some new furniture, sponsored by lovely Black Mesa that just _adores_ his continued silence on the matter of the meltdown. Benrey refuses to come with him to IKEA for “they hunt you there for sport” related reasons, and so Gordon calls up Coomer and Bubby to ask them if they need any shelves or something and would like to join- and they do. Their lab is always low on more storage surfaces, and they all pile into Gordon’s uncool dad-car as coined by Benrey, and drive, spending the next few hours either looking at furniture or looking for each other amidst said furniture. Gordon also buys more moose-shaped macaroni, because, standing in the foods aisle of IKEA, nearing the end of their trip, he distinctly understands he _really wants to go home._ And that now entails Benrey. And the more he thinks about it, the more Gordon realizes he’s… doing okay.

Standing with a box of dry macaroni in his hand just _had_ to be the grand moment of realization he’s doing much better, huh. He eats homecooked things everyday instead of bad take-out, he sleeps better even if with just the background noise of Benrey going at it on the XBOX Gordon got him for no reason at all, he actually feels like he wants to go home, for once. And he supposes that’s all the proof he needs that he can take Joshua back in. He adds three more boxes of the macaroni to his cart and moves on to look for Bubby in the salmon aisle.

They load everything into his car and Gordon drops the two off first, along with their new arsenal of shelves, and waves them goodnight, and Coomer tells him to say hi to Benrey and he will. Gordon drives home, it’s already late, but he calls Katelyn, drumming his left fingers on the wheel. She says Joshie misses him and that she’s more than happy to drop him off at Gordon’s on the way to work in a few days. He’s almost buzzing with joy at the thought of seeing his son again and that’s such a drastic change from the emotional pit of nothing that the first few weeks out of Mesa left him with. He doesn’t want anything to change.

Benrey opens the door for him and doesn’t need to be asked twice when it comes to help carrying things from the trunk home. Benrey doesn’t seem to pay it much attention until they’re inside and he’s staring at a box that houses what will soon become furniture.

“Yo, Feetman, I don’t know what kind of couch you got but I can’t see if fitting in here.”

Gordon chuckles nervously, coming to lean on the box a bit, searching Benrey’s face for a reaction before he even starts answering, “Well, uh, this is actually gonna be a bed. There’s a mattress in my car.”

“Whuh, you dented yours with your unepic sleeping in one position only ever?”

Gordon had considered that this wasn’t the best way to ask, but he shrugs, “Nah, it’s for you. Thought sleeping on that shit couch all this time would fuck with your back or something.”

“Where you gonna put it after I leave?” Benrey eyes the box and Gordon’s gotten good enough to read him now, and that’s tentative fucking elation there, and he’s already grinning at Benrey.

“You planning on leaving?”

Benrey looks up like it’s a trick question, “I- uh- I…” He frowns down at his hands, “I would like it if mean Feetman let me stay?”

Gordon can feel his ribcage buzz like it’s been full of butterflies, a weight off his shoulders- a strange fear Benrey would one day call the roommates favor over and vanish. “I think mean old Feetman would also like you to stay, Benrey. Let’s go get the mattress.”

The next day they clean out a room that was previously mostly unused clutter, moving in the bed and a thing of shelves for all his game DVDs that have started to populate the space under the TV. The few pieces of clothing he has that (aren’t stolen from Gordon with no remorse) go there too. Benrey falls back onto the bed with an audible smack of his helmet but otherwise a content sigh, spreading his arms out and accidentally brushing Gordon’s knee where he stands nearby. Gordon thinks about that for a while as he geos out to get Benrey new clothes, this time braving the cold wind and mild rain alone, because Benrey doesn’t have a coat warm enough, and Gordon’s refused to let him out in a tee.

He rushes through the motions of getting Benrey boots for colder weather and a heavier coat, all the while on video call with Benrey, so he can assess how atrocious each selected item is and if it can therefore stay. Before checking out and paying, Gordon grabs something else from the store without alerting his video-call companion, picking the worst chullo out of the bunch and hoping Benrey would appreciate it.

At home, he doesn’t know how to present the hat and ends up tossing it onto the chair in his bedroom for future notice.

The bed idea backfires the first night Benrey tries to sleep there.

Gordon isn’t sure why he assumed, as a rule of thumb, that Benrey simply didn’t get nightmares. But that night Gordon jerks awake not out of his own memories but from a fast, sharp yelp from down the hall. Before he can make much of it or find his glasses to get out of bed, Benrey’s in his doorway, knocking lightly and looking guilty as all hell for both being here and doing this at all.

“Ben?”

“Shit- sorry didn’t know you were awake- uh. I’m going back to the couch for t’night.” Benrey stares at Gordon with eyes that possess a mild, pleasant glow, “So uh- I’ll be there, yeah?”

“Wait, why?” Gordon’s doing his best to fight his way out of sleep, sitting up a tad bit and watching Benrey fiddle with the hem of his shirt- yeah that’s definitely another one of Gordon’s.

“Unfamiliar, in uh, there. S’ empty in the new room, yknow? Void…” Benrey glances away, “Living room better. Don’ wanna be alone, yknow?”

“Living room’s empty too,” Gordon frowns, glasses not too much help in the darkness aside from watching the apprehensive stature of Benrey’s shadow.

“Nah, got like, car headlights outside and shit. Pretty cool.”

Gordon starts getting the picture of it, the nightmares, the absolute terror of waking up somewhere you don’t recognize and having sweeping carlights for company on a normal night… He’s a bit more than half awake and yet this decision comes from practically no-where. He lifts the side of his blanket and nods mid-yawn, “Climb in, don’t wanna be alone, I get it.”

Benrey takes a moment to react- too long, even – but the second he doesn’t see any humor on Gordon’s face at the invitation, he takes the few steps into Gordon’s room and basically ragdolls onto his bed, making Gordon involuntarily break out laughing, brain a few second behind to process what should be funny.

“Sorry, sorry,” he tosses the blanket over Benrey, “Looked funny from the side- here.” He yawns again and lies back down – more like crashes – ending up facing Benrey. There’s a good amount of space between them but after Benrey keeps quiet with anxious, darting eyes, still sweating from his nightmare, Gordon opens his arms too, thinking fuck it, he’s wanted to hug Benrey while they watched movies so often that this is the next best thing.

Benrey hesitates again but scoots over, ducking his head into Gordon's chest and accidentally headbutting Gordon with the metal of his helmet right in the jaw, causing Gordon to roll onto his back, holding his face and groaning, “Jesus christ, do you sleep in it?”

It doesn’t look comfortable and Gordon can already see how the overhang ridge of its cap will dig into his neck or collarbone, but it’s Benrey so it’s fine. His chin doesn’t even hurt that bad and he sighs, rolling back over, draping an arm over Benrey, all about ready to knock back out, “It’s whatever, go to sleep”.

“Does it bother you?” Benrey’s got his hands trapped against Gordon’s chest and he can feel Benrey politely take handfuls of the shirt Gordon sleeps in.

“Nah,” Gordon mumbles, attempting to rest his head in a way that doesn’t press his nose into the hard metal of it, enjoying the immediately calming nature of hugging someone warm, “S’long as you’re comfortable or whatever.

He’s already falling asleep, teetering on the edge of it, but Benrey’s sudden movement pulls him back out of it, and Gordon cracks his eyes open, noticing he hadn’t removed his own glasses before attempting to drift off.

But Benrey’s pulled away, putting space between them, and Gordon’s about to apologize for being too touchy or whatever, when Benrey’s hands come up to his head. And he removes the helmet.

Gordon’s too fresh out of sleep to think right and it’s too dark without the night-light on, but a considerable amount of what looks to be pitch black hair tumbles out of the helmet’s confines and onto the pillow. Benrey turns around to drop the helmet onto the floor and lie back down, looking on-edge and bracing for some sort of comment.

His hair’s long and thick and Gordon consciously pics the route of _not_ becoming any more lucid, lest he overthinks his actions and doesn’t reach out to pull Benrey back into a hug.

He falls asleep not too long after, chin now resting on a head of hair instead of metal, enjoying the inherent warmth and fuzzy comfort that comes with feeling someone else’s arms snake around you and hold on, breath evening out.

The alarm happens too soon and too loud for his liking. Before he’s even fully lucid, he’s reaching over to get it- his hand’s almost to his phone when the sound stops.

Gordon freezes up a bit, squinting, trying his best to process the lack of alarm, when someone shifts under his reached-out arm. He still picks up his phone and lies back down, staring quizzically at his turned off alarm, “Did you do this?”

Benrey uncurls a bit from his shrimp pose and stretches, popping several joints, face imprinted with pillow creases, “Who sets the X-Files theme as their alarm.”

“It’s a remix,” Gordon sighs and sits up, why did he set his alarm so fucking early. He feels Benrey curl back up, pressing into Gordon’s side and leg for warmth- _right_ Joshie’s getting brought over today and the thought wakes him from the trance of tracing Benrey’s hair with his eyes, “Shit, Kate’s gonna drop Joshie off in a few hours, right, right. Dude, let go of my leg, m’gonna have to get up,” Gordon chuckles, dropping a hand down to shake Benrey’s shoulder.

All he gets in response is angry whining and yet a loosened hold on his leg. Gordon’s able to climb out of bed against the allure of both warm covers and warm Benrey and grabs his glasses, padding over to the bathroom and shivering at the cold floor. He needs to do one more trash-sweet of the apartment, make sure there’s no knives or scissors in easy access- _talk to Benrey._

He’d mentioned Joshua would be coming over but it never got elaborated on and he needs to tell Benrey some quick kid-tips, like about swearing and whatnot. He finds Benrey still in bed, idly scrolling through his phone and barely acknowledge Gordon when he sits down on the edge of the mattress.

“You gonna get up anytime?”

Benrey frowns, sinking further into the blanket, “No, world is big cold. Feetman’s bed soft, warm, and safe.”

Gordon chuckles, reaching over to grab his prosthetic and begin to fasten it, “World big and cold, but also contains pancakes.”

“Pancakes?” Benrey looks up, shutting his phone off.

“Yeah, we’re gonna make pancakes.”

Benrey groans and rolls over, facing away from Gordon, “Boo, hate when pancakes take time, want world to have pancake now.”

“Well, sucks to suck, c’mon.” Gordon goes to pat Benrey on the back but kind of gets distracted by Benrey’s hair in natural light and ends up landing his palm on Benrey’s head, patting him out of nothing better to do, “About Joshua, can you like, not swear or call me Feetman or… do alien things that a kid might find scary? Like, don’t turn into a skeleton, maybe?”

Benrey doesn’t answer and Gordon carries on, still playing with the hair, “But yeah, just be civil, be polite, I’d really appreciate that. He likes video games too so maybe y’all will have something to talk about. I like your hair. He’s also really hands-on so he’ll probably end up uh, like grabbing your pant-leg or something, so just be prepared he’s a kid that likes to hug- I don’t want to hear a single joke about how I do the same thing, I’ve heard them a- What?”

Benrey’s staring at him over his shoulder with wide eyes, not blinking, “You like my hair?”

Gordon yanks his hand away as if caught stealing cookies, “Well- I- I mean your hair’s really nice, and uh, looks good on you- stop grinning- so like- stop it.”

“Whatever you say, Feetman,” Benrey swings out of bed and stands up past Gordon, readjusting his shirt where it’d got all twisted, “Is my hair turning you gay? That’s kind of simp of you, pff.”

“Oh shut up, jesus christ.” Gordon stands too, crossing his arms, “What now?”

“Don’t know where my helmet went, must’ve rolled under your cringe bed,” Benrey shrugs, scratching at his head with apprehension like he’s quickly becoming aware of the novelty to not being hatted.

“About that, I actually got you something else? I didn’t know if you’d like, wear it, so feel free to ignore it or whatever, but uh,” Gordon snatches the chullo off his chair and presents it to Benrey, “Might protect your ears from the cold more than a helmet would.”

Benrey’s eyes go wide yet again, and he grabs it out of Gordon’s hand, immediately powerwalking past him and out of the room, expression deadest on revealing nothing.

Gordon sighs at the antics but goes to change out of his pajamas. Today’s gonna be turbulent no matter which direction – negative or positive – it goes, but as he listens to Benrey walking around downstairs in the living room, turning on the TV to something mundane and beginning to boil water for tea, (Benrey doesn’t like tea, the only person in the household to make tea on the regular is Gordon), something reassures him there’s no way Benrey’s presence will lead to catastrophe. After all, he doubts he would’ve bounced back from Black Mesa within a month and a half if it wasn’t for Benrey’s decision to pester Gordon about rooming. In a way, he owes this Joshie day to Benrey, and that’s okay.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i am unable to stop writin g for this im addin g one more chapter that wil lcome within a few days like this one has... lets go queer community

He hasn’t seen Joshua in person for almost two months if you factor in the week at Mesa and then another week and a half of delirious hospitalization – but they’d been on video call a few times because he’d never ghost his kid like that without at least the occasional check-in – yeah, see? You dad’s still alive, I’m okay kid, I’ll see you soon.

And yet, the sigh of Joshua booking it in his direction from Kate’s car is euphoric, catching him from the running jump the kid does, spinning around a bit, making sure to not drop him with the slippery donut coat he’s in. Joshie looks different, kids grow fast and Gordon knows he’s not getting those two months back, but he can compensate, he can play LEGOs with him and take him to the zoo and let him win in Mario Kart, and he can read him bedtime stories and let him sit on his shoulders, and make Benrey show him the sweet voice and he can make up for it, he can try.

Katelyn waves him over for a kiss on the cheek, a little bit of chatter, as Gordon keeps Joshua held against his hip, but she has to drive off to work soon- her eyes catch on something over his shoulder, and Gordon’s about to ask what- when he turns around to look and catches the fast dodge of a tacky yellow-blue chullo out of the window’s way.

Shit. He whips back around to try and somehow salvage the situation but Katelyn’s got a soft smile on her face, “I gotta run, but you _need_ to promise to finally tell me about him later on, kay?”

Gordon’s a bit baffled, a bit stumped, a _bit fucking lost,_ and she’s already getting into her car after kissing Joshie goodbye, and he has to knock on her window to get it rolled down, “Wait- I- sorry I should’ve told you earlier- but, um, that’s Benrey.”

There’s a smug little smile to Katelyn’s usually mild demeanor, “I figured you were living with someone, you’re not subtle about it, say hi for me.”

The window’s closed and she drives off, and Gordon’s left standing in the middle of the street, holding Joshua who’s already talking a mile a minute and kicking his legs a bit.

Benrey immediately greets him with a hissing apology at the front door, immediately blending into trying to play it off as something else, but Gordon waves him off, still trying to process at what point ever had he hinted at living with someone when talking to Kate.

“Benrey, this is my son, Joshua. J, this is Ben-rey. He lives with me-” out of habit Gordon wants to add _for now_ but he knows that’s no longer the case, and that’s good, “So, um, he’s gonna hang out with us.”

Joshie stares at Benrey with huge round eyes, a bit startled, but meekly reaches out a small hand in a high-five.

When Benrey gets it immediately and returns the high-five, Joshua smiles a little, still shy, but Gordon can’t help but grin, can’t help but get the feeling of freefall in his chest at the sight.

Gordon sets Joshie down and puts his hands on his hips, grinning, “Who’s up for pancakes?”

There’s a resounding cheer and a race to the kitchen and Gordon couldn’t have dreamed for more.

They pull a chair up for Joshie to stand on and Benrey hikes his sleeves up – Gordon’s not even surprised that it’s yet another stolen hoodie, this time from a comic con he went to in college. Joshie between them, Gordon monitors both of his Chef Assistants – “Hell yeah, we’re gonna be _chef assistants_ buddy,” Benrey leans down to stage-whisper at Joshie – and makes sure that not _too_ much batter is eaten, that Benrey doesn’t eat a whole raw egg whole again, that flour isn’t _everywhere_ everywhere, but he also finds himself laughing at Benrey’s overdramatic complaining about being banned from using the whisk-

He shoos them both away ones the pans and oil come out, and throwing a look over his shoulder tells Gordon that a very awkward Benrey has been dragged to the couch and handed a controller, instantly relaxing- and also noticing Gordon’s watching. He gives Gordon a weird face that no conclusive emotion can be read from but Gordon smiles at him and turns back to frying. As the batter turns into pancakes, he listens to Joshie’s over-excited loud shouting about some game, intercut with Benrey’s monotone here and there, and Gordon can’t help but get overwhelmed by a grin when he hears Joshie called the other “ _Benny”._

They eat at the kitchen table, and he kind of hates Benrey for introducing Joshua to the idea of putting whipped cream directly into your mouth and enabling more whipped cream consumption, and Gordon gets back at him by waiting for Benrey to do it again, sitting there with a mouthful of whipped cream. He turns to talk to him and pointedly places his head on top of Benrey’s trying to look serious as he murmurs, “Make sure to swallow,” which does its intended job and makes Benrey inhale whipped cream, accidentally dribble some onto Gordon’s stolen hoodie, slap the table as he tries not to choke, and finally sprint from the table to the sink, coughing.

Gordon waits at the table smugly, grinning into his hand and turning to Joshie, “See, when you eat straight from the can you can end up like poor Benny here, so how about we don’t do that, yeah?”

Joshie nods with mild fear and moves to add whipped cream to his plate instead, eyeing Benrey who’s off somewhere trying to get whipped cream out of his nose.

They end up going to the park, Gordon first supervising Joshie’s autumn attire and then _Benrey’s to boot._ Sighing and turning to stare at Benrey who’s expectantly standing there after watching Gordon zip Joshie’s coat for him.

“What? God, fine.” Gordon grumbles and makes sure to zip Benrey up to the fucking nose, yanking the hood over his chullo in a way that’s definitely not comfortable and makes hair go everywhere. Benrey barely changes anything about that, departing from the house looking like someone trying to hide their identity, albeit having put his hair away into the coat.

Joshie runs around and screams and spends a good five minutes crying over Gordon’s prosthetic because this means his dad will never be able to do cartwheels- and Gordon has to reassure him _that he never could do cartwheels either way so it’s really no big deal._

“The hell are cart-wheels? You make wheels? What? Cart like peasant? Peasant mood?” Benrey hovers awkwardly, unsure what to do with Joshie crying into Gordon’s armpit.

“No like- Joshie can you show Benny what a cartwheel is? C’mon don’t cry, your dad was never a cartwheel type of guy, it’s okay.”

Benrey gets the hang of cartwheels pretty quickly, even though he certainly does not do them in a human way. Gordon doesn’t know how that’s possible, but he’s certain joints don’t … shouldn’t? move like that. Joshie loves it, so does it matter?

Dinner at a kid-friendly Italian place, smoothies, and on their walk back Joshie finds a peculiarly long stick he refuses to drop. Gordon sends him to run ahead so his knees stop being endangered by said stick waving around, and he watches Joshie swing at invisible monsters with it, shouting something to himself and completely absorbed in the action. He’d missed this, missed seeing his son smile and babble off about nothing, missed feeling warm during autumns- in ways that clothes don’t dictate. Ways that are lain by the sound of his son’s laughter and the time it takes for Joshie to read all smoothie flavor options before finally going with what he always gets. By watching Benrey’s awkward yet genuine attempts to interact with the boy, seeming more enchanted by his consistent and indulgent glee, taking up Benrey in any debate – from the superiority of gummy flavors to his opinions on Shrek.

Joshie does end up taking Benrey’s knees out with a blind swing of the branch.

They’re home and it’s pleasantly warmer. “You have school tomorrow, it’s already late,” Gordon holds Joshie as he wiggles, “I’ll read you two stories if you go brush your teeth without complaining.”

He holds up on the promise, quietly working his way through a fairytale book and then one about aliens. He can tell Joshie’s fighting to stay awake, and yet it’s a losing battle as he nods a bit, washed in the warm glow of his mushroom nightlight. Gordon’s ready to leave, setting the books down, but Joshie’s clingy- and Gordon knows: for good reason. It’s hard to lose an arm or all sense of reality but it’s infinitely harder to lose a dad at Joshie’s age. And that could’ve happened. Gordon could’ve died countless, countless times on his way out. He didn’t. He’s alive, with Joshie pressed against his side, Benrey clattering around somewhere in the kitchen, the faint noises of a neighbor’s TV, wind outside- he’s alive – and so he settles to sing Joshie a song before he leaves. Or two. Or three. However many it takes for the boy to drift off knowing his dad is _there_.

He tries to pick ones Joshie won’t know, so he isn’t tempted to sing along, going through his endless memory of old songs. Trying to figure out if Lady Gaga’s earlier albums are now ‘old’ in the eyes of Joshie’s generation… And so he sings things the radio has on sometimes, old songs that make him remember being a kid too. To the end of the last one, Gordon sees a shadow fall across the floor outside the room and knows Benrey is listening, standing there just out of view, and Gordon smiles softly, singing a tag bit louder so that he’s sure the snooping alien can hear.

The shadow doesn’t move until Gordon’s done, and then Benrey casually pretends to have just walked in, whispering, “Wanna watch that Doom movie?”

He’s backlit by the hallway, holding a mug, wearing knee socks with his shorts, and- Gordon smiles, nodding at the invitation – Benrey’s missing his hat. His hair’s dark and a bit wavy and comes down to Benrey’s elbows, and Gordon climbs out of Joshie’s bed carefully as to not wake him. He approaches unable to resist the urge- and drapes an arm around Benrey to steer him towards the living room, shutting Joshie’s door beforehand.

Benrey’s pretty quiet and leans into Gordon to an almost ridiculous walk-inefficient extent, looking drowsy and content. He stays under Gordon’s arm on the couch and they can only get halfway through the movie before Benrey tips his mug too much to the side, falling asleep, and spills coffee onto Gordon’s knee.

It’s cold though, so Gordon doesn’t even make a fuss, just muttering, “Who’s the clumsy boy now huh,” before removing the mug from Benrey’s grip and pausing the film, “I’m tired, turn in for the night?”

The more difficult part of all this is coming up. He’s washing the mug, water freezing, and wonders how to go about this. On one hand, he’s learned to give people their goddamned space. On the other, he’s genuinely upset at the thought of getting one night of hugging and never again another. How do you ask your roommate if he wants to sleep with you again?- Gordon almost drops the mug, _not like that. Like. Share the bed. Yeah._

He finds Benrey asleep on the couch – probably unintentionally – with the TV still on pause, his hat on sideways, and no blanket.

“Dude, dude wake up you’ll catch a cold out here.” He shakes Benrey a bit by the shoulder, receiving absolutely nothing in return but vague mumbling. Gordon knows he could simply bring a blanket over and let Benrey be, but… he doesn’t have a conclusive reason, but he _doesn’t want to_ do that, and maybe it’s enough.

“S’cold cause Feetman house no battery.”

“What the fuck are you saying- yeah, no shit it’s cold, c’mon,” And yes he’s smiling softly, studying the relaxed half-asleep peace on Benrey’s face, eyebrows smoothed out and mouth partially open to reveal a row of unexpectedly pristine, pointed teeth, “Fine, I’ll bring you a blanket, g’night.”

This, of all things, seems to wake Benrey, sitting up so quickly it throws him into disorientation, “Whuh- yeah no. Wait.” He looks around, “Oh, couch. Right. Uh. Yeah, sleepy on couch. Yeah.”

There’s a sourness to his expression and Gordon smirks a bit, crossing his arms, “Can sleepy in my room too, if you want to, that is.”

Benrey stares at him, hat still lopsided and hair everywhere, including his mouth, and before Gordon can back out with embarrassment, he grins a bit, “Gay?”

“Don’t start this. You used to ask me for hugs all the time and now that I actually deliver you’re being a little bitch about it.” Gordon lifts his eyebrows, knowing he’s got higher ground with that he’s more awake and that Benrey certainly wants to lose the argument and go cuddle again, if his fiddling hands and the habit of chewing on his lip are anything to go by.

Benrey does lose the argument. He still cracks jokes as they brush their teeth, coming real close to getting toothpaste on his shirt, and then continues to rattle off nonsense on their way to Gordon’s room, constant chatter filling the air- yep, still talking, now about fox petting mechanics in a game, as Gordon undoes his prosthetic and removes his hair-tie and glasses.

Only when he finally crawls under the covers, feeling the full scope of the day setting deep into his bones, and opens his arms up for Benrey, does the other shut up.

It’s fast, mid-word even, the click of a jaw accompanying Benrey’s movement to clamber over, tossing his hat away and almost punching his face into Gordon’s chest.

“Jesus, calm down, you’re gonna break my ribs with your nose,” Gordon sighs half-heartedly, already smiling as he pulls Benrey closer, wrapping an arm around him and pressing his nose into a head of hair, “Don’t you have your own shampoo?”

“Whah?”

“You’ve been stealing mine, I thought you had your own.”

“Nuh, I don’t steal your fail fruit mix shamp-ew,” Benrey sighs out, tangibly relaxing, a hand lightly crawling up from where it was against Gordon’s chest to drape over his side. It leaves tingles in its path and Gordon can’t help chuckling.

“Dude, I can literally smell it in my face right now.”

Benrey locks up for a moment and Gordon pulls him closer, huffing a laugh to hopefully indicate he’s not mad, just amused. The message seems to be received, and when Benrey melts again, it’s home. Joshie sleeping in another room, and Gordon’s alarm set for hellishly early again tomorrow to cook him breakfast before school, and the feeling of cold settling in outside the covers, rivaling the incredible warmness of sharing a bed, and the gentle breaths fanning across his neck where Benrey’s already asleep in lieu of defending his shampoo stealing, and everything the last four months have amounted to, it’s _home._

One of his first pleasant dreams. It happens slowly and he’ll never remember all of it upon jerking awake to the X-files theme, but he’ll remember scenes, remember the images later, and he’ll think about how it’s been so long since he’d dreamt. There’d been a time where his nights held no memorable plots to them, sleeping the bare amount needed between work at Mesa and Joshie’s school. And then when it was only ever nightmares, waking up sweating, screaming, thrashing, running to the bathroom to throw up. And then just months of general unease. Dreams not terrifying but stressful, trapped in mazes of Black Mesa corridors, phasing through walls and falling through floors-

But now he dreams of a farmer’s market he’s never been to, it’s autumn but not cold, everything is orange and he’s out with Joshie, and even if he doesn’t appear in the dream, there’s a sense that Benrey’s somewhere nearby, maybe at another stall buying caramel apples. He needs to show Benrey caramel apples, he wonders if he’s ever had them in real life.

The alarm hits again and this time Gordon’s only half-way there when his phone shuts up.

“Dude, you gotta stop doing that, I’ll fall back asleep,” Gordon grumbles, voice gruffy from sleep, and still gets his phone, flopping back down and immediately feeling two arms latch around his chest.

“Sucks.”

“Yeah, I know. You can stay asleep, I’m gonna go get Joshie to school,” Gordon yawns, checking his email and reasoning that he can lie around for ten more minutes without a huge detriment to the schedule. “How’d you sleep?”

“So bad,” Benrey yawns too and Gordon side-eyes the teeth with curiosity, “You kicked me so bad, all the time, and then uh hog blanket and be mean and- yeah all Gordon know to do is be bad roommate and make life miserable.”

“Sure, you can sleep in your own bed tonight then, yeah?”

“Nuh.”

Gordon wheezes, setting his phone down and trusting himself to stay awake even if he closes his eyes a little and relaxes into Benrey’s ridiculous warmth, “You’re like a space heater.”

“It’s early a.m. and I haven’t even brushed my- my hair and you’re-” Benrey yawns again, muffling it into Gordon’s side, “Already calling me hot?”

“Pff, you’ve got drool on your face, so no.”

Benrey finally opens his eyes a bit, resorting to being talked to, blinking heavily up at Gordon from under heavy black eyelashes, “So if I didn’t have drool on my face, you’d call me hot?” He wiggles his eyebrows with no more emotion whatsoever and Gordon gets the overwhelming desire to hug him really really hard and never let him go.

“You wish,” Gordon huffs and after a second lifts his head to openly smile down at Benrey, which garners a partially unexpected reaction: Benrey bristles a bit at the expression and ducks his head away, leaving Gordon staring at a head of awfully touchable black hair. He resists the impulse and decides to finally climb out of bed, shaking Benrey’s grabbing little hands the fuck off.

Gordon shivers at the floor and makes himself coffee, lunch for Joshie, then breakfast for them both, sunny-side eggs. Joshie drags his legs a bit, complaining about wanting a similar day to the one they just had, but nope, Gordon shuts him down quickly with the promise of pizza for dinner. Just don’t tell mom. Shhhh.

He lets Joshie pick the music in the car and they sing along to it on the way to Joshie’s school, Joshie kicking Gordon’s seat occasionally from the back. The drive home is done through a McDonalds to get coffee- and a kids meal because Benrey gets a kick out of the plastic trash toys. He drives home, already banking on Benrey still being asleep so Gordon has good justification to crash back to sleep instead of going to revising the Xen curriculum.

“You still asleep?” He shouts through a grin the moment he’s home, hearing a resounding _fuck you I sure was_ from the bedroom.

“Okay, I will make an exception-” Benrey jerks away from him when Gordon climbs back into bed, “And tell you to keep your goddamn feet away from me- you are _cold.”_

“Blah, blah, whatever,” Gordon’s ready to fall back asleep even after black coffee, “You gonna get out of bed if I touch your ankle with my icecube toes by accident?”

“Yes. No. I will kick you out?”

“Out of my own bed? You’re on thin _ice_ there with those claims, Ben, don’t you just wanna hug me? Want me to hold you in my warm strong arms- arm? Yeah?” Gordon takes his glasses off, leaning over Benrey to place them on the bedside cabinet.

Benrey crosses his arms under the covers, frowning, “This is emotional warfare.”

“Learned a few things from the US military,” Gordon mumbles and drifts off, feeling Benrey’s knees knock against his own as he finally caves and shuffles closer.

They end up lazying around against the cold for another three hours, napping and occasionally talking, and one time Gordon fades back into consciousness to see Benrey lying on his chest and singing, sweet voice drawing thin lines in the air. He sighs and wraps around him a bit more tightly and that’s okay. He deserves some rest.

Benrey eventually dicks off to his own devices, rummaging into the kids meal and dragging it away to his room before looking indecisive as fuck when crossing Gordon in the hall before settling on a nod. Gordon works, picks up Joshua, drives back with a stop at the mall, and they watch the Spongebob Movie at home over pizza. Benrey sighs deeply at Gordon’s choice of Hawaiian and makes several pepperoni extra sausage jokes whenever Joshua isn’t paying attention.

The process of figuring out that yes Benrey would like to share a bed again is shorter tonight.

Nearing the end of the week with Joshua here, it’s a routine. Gordon hasn’t had a routine in so long it’s like a placating kiss of fate to go to sleep each night and know he’s waking up early only to detangle from Benrey for ten minutes straight before a day where he knows exactly how the hours will fall into place, and it’s grounding, but not boring. It can’t be boring with his two favorite people-

Gordon stops mid-pouring milk into Joshie’s breakfast cereal.

He doesn’t know where that sentiment came from. He’s living with his two favorite people. Is that fair? Is that fair to Kate who he’s fond of? Or to Tommy and the rest of the science team? What about his college buddies or- or- no he can’t imagine waking up every day next to any of them every day and still finding wonder in it, find the love for life in the laughter of his son and the rare smile of whatever Benrey is.

He supposes it’s fitting. He supposes it’s deserved and well earned. He resumes making breakfast.

-it’s grounding, but not boring. It can’t be boring with his two favorite people there, making every day wildly unpredictable and enchanting. Joshie’s all over the place with his child’s imagination and energy, and Benrey’s also all over the place with whatever goes on in his head and his dumb jokes. He makes sure to tell Joshie he loves him when dropping him off at school, makes sure to really _mean_ _it_ instead of saying it habitually in place of a normal goodbye.

“Okay daddy, I love you too!” Joshie beams up at him, not grasping the entirety of what’s brewing in Gordon’s chest this morning but truly, really, loving him back none the less. “Can we watch Stitch at home today?”

“Yeah sure thing bud, see you after school.” Gordon waves him goodbye and drives back with his windows down, trying to chill the overbearing feelings out of himself.

Joshie’s going back to his mum tomorrow for the next week, and then the routine is repeated. Back on track.

Surprisingly, Benrey’s awake and out of bed when Gordon gets home. Gordon takes his explanation about how it sucks to sleep alone at face value and doesn’t push, offering to get coffee at their usual café.

Benrey dresses quickly as Gordon waits downstairs, and they shout a conversation across the entire house- until Benrey sticks his head out into the living room staircase and declares he doesn’t have mittens. Gordon’s about to offer he hold Benrey’s hands on the way there but it’s stupid and uncalled for and he brushes the thought off, instead shouting back to find Gordon’s spares in his room. One of the drawers.

They leave shortly, hands mitted, and Gordon belatedly realizes he’d been to busy thinking about holding Benrey’s hands in whatever context to feel anxious about Benrey going through his drawers.

_Guess that eradicates the don’t go through my shit condition. Huh._ He’s not even too mad about it. Or surprised. He just lets Benrey talk at him about the impact of Blair Witch Project on the plague of found footage films as he orders them both the usual, not needing to ask, and gladly warms his fingers on the coffee cup. Benrey’s voice is calm in its monotony, explaining something he knows too much about after sleuthing around the webs forever. He’s got his shoulders hiked up to his ears, keeping his neck from the cold, and Gordon absently studies it, listening and trying to process his soft, warm skin at the same time. He cannot wait until evening, where they’ll settle on the couch and he’ll get Joshie under one arm and Benrey under another because it’s warmer that way and comfortable, and he can’t wait to climb into bed with Benrey again to hold him and feel his nose poke into his chest. But by god is this good too, listening to him talk and bumping their knees under the table occasionally. And no matter what minuscule changes to schedule may come from Joshie leaving for another week, he’s sure they cannot and will not be bad. Benrey’s small smile at a particularly gnarly horror industry fact is proof. Benrey is proof.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! you already know where i am on tumblr so .. .yeah if you have a weakness for specific tropes hmu on there cause they might just end up in ch3 of this just saying


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> final run ✌😔 this took a bit longer but AYE

They go to get groceries near Joshie’s school, planning to pick him up directly after. Gordon entrusts Benrey with hunting down what three hotpocket varieties they take home, and moves onto the juice aisle, sighing as he puts Benrey’s dumb fucking fruit mix juice jug into the cart. It tastes incredibly fabricated and yet Benrey sees something in it – to the point of finishing a gallon in a week’s time. Joshie’s permanently banned from even trying it, in case he likes it too, because Gordon does not want his human son drinking whatever they put in the 'fruity delight' concoction.

“Dude,” Benrey shows up over his shoulder, “Dude, they’re fucking _babies.”_

“What?” Gordon turns to look at a bag of baby carrots being held out to him.

“How’d they fucking do that?” Benrey’s staring at him with huge eyes, “How’d they fucking babify the carrots?”

Gordon’s stuck without an answer, trying to understand what exactly he wants to do. Because he wants to do _something._ He might’ve mistaken it for… like... pushing Benrey around, if this was months back. But now it’s a weird itch under his skin, one he sometimes gets when falling asleep with Benrey in his arms, or when Benrey says something unreasonably, illogically bizarre, funny. A call to action, the specifics of which he can’t figure out. Whatever it is, he really wants to do it now. Is it hug? He punches Benrey’s shoulder instead and throws the carrots in too, Joshie likes them anyway, “Yeah they carve them out of the normal ones, haven’t you heard?”

Joshua spots them outside the school and sprints, his backpack bouncing left and right.

“Which one of us is he going at?” Benrey whispers, shifting his stance a bit so he’s not leaning on Gordon’s car, “Cause I like my bones unbroken.”

“You’ll be fine,” Gordon bumps their shoulders and stands too, ready to catch his meteor of a son.

Joshua ends up barreling into them both, knocking their heads together as each dive to try and catch him. Gordon lets Joshie eat the carrots in the backseat on the drive home as Benrey bothers him every five minutes to say he’s got a skull fracture from Gordon’s forehead assault. For the sake of distraction, Gordon offers dinner plans- immediately, Joshie and Benrey manage to rattle Gordon into getting Chinese. He hands the phone to Benrey, saying to order while they drive. Gordon keeps his eyes on the road, but can feel Benrey’s gaze burrowing into him, definitely contemplating ordering something fucking weird.

As he waits for the line to connect, Benrey sings Sia’s Chandelier too loud, threatening to let it bleed into the call conversation – _and goddamn it ,they have Gordon’s number saved in their restaurant system, they’re gonna remember this as the number with the fucking blaring sia cover –_ but Benrey cuts himself off just in time, proceeding to calmly order Joshie’s usual, Gordon’s and his own.

He hands the phone back with a huff, having passed up the opportunity to troll, but Gordon takes a chance at a red light, and accepts it back only after holding Benrey’s hand for a moment in silent thanks. Benrey decides to take the same red light and throw himself into the backseat while the car's stopped, slipping his hand out of Gordon’s and scrambling out of sight. Gordon laughs and hears Joshie cheer at the new backseat company.

He leaves them to get the movie ready, putting groceries away and eventually feeling Benrey’s presence in the kitchen, wordlessly joining in the sorting process. Every time Benrey hands him something that goes to the top shelves, he horrendously mispronounces its name and Gordon giggles, and soon the deliveryguy is knocking.

They settle, food, remote, Joshie on the floor so he can eat over the coffee table, and Benrey against Gordon’s side, cold on his own. Opening scene, space ship, and Gordon’s half distracted by Benrey almost dropping food on his pants twice. Joshie hits their calves and tells them to be quiet- and they finally shut up to watch the film, eat, relax. Benrey wolves his food down first and then idly picks at Gordon’s, half-paying attention to the film-

Until Stitch pulls out the Ugly Duckling book on screen.

“Hey, didn’t you have that for some reason? With you?” Gordon tips his head to whisper into Benrey’s ear, feeling him jerk a bit with shivers.

Benrey turns to finally look at the TV, “Yah, it’s in my room now…” He watches the scene, frowning, “What happened, I wasn’t watching.”

Gordon, sitting there with a dozen small braids in his hair that Benrey’s been absorbed in making, sighs, “Stitch, the main character, the alien? Uh, he got taken in by Lilo but he messed up and broke some stuff and put Lilo in danger, not on purpose really, and so now he’s uh, outside.”

“Will he be taken back?”

“Man, just watch the movie, you can play with my hair later.”

“Pinky promise?”

Joshie looks up at them again, “You guys are the worst.”

“Sorry, sorry, we’ll be quiet,” Gordon smiles, waiting for Joshie to turn away before offering Benrey a pinky and a grin.

Everyone pays attention to the movie. Gordon’s watched this too many times though, so he can spare some of that attention unto Benrey. Especially now that Benrey seems engrossed in the story and less likely to look back. And so he looks.

Something happens when you see someone too much, too often. You stop noticing the slow, steady change. It happens too gradually and it’s only in moments like these, when you look, when you _really_ look, do you see the passage of time. The effect it’s had. How long has it been? Since Benrey appeared, ready to accept the worst of conditions in place of sleeping on benches in the park?

Gordon looks at him now, and he looks so different. How hadn’t he noticed? His skin’s better, smoother, he no longer looks greasy and rumpled. Now Gordon just wants to touch his face, hold it, he looks healthy. He’s put on weight, gotten rid of his eyebags, lost the weird discolored look to his face. He finally looks alive, _lively_ even, lashes black like his hair. He looks peaceful. Gordon remembers the way his face contorted in anger and fear and pain in Xen, the sharp angles of his near-skeletal form as he lost the humanity, lost the façade. Huge and menacing. Now he asks Gordon to put food away into the top shelves. Now you can see his hair, and Gordon buries his fingers in it where his arm rests over Benrey’s shoulders, playing with a strand. Well-washed, soft. No longer helmet-matted. Something’s happening on screen and Gordon glances over- Lilo’s found Stitch in the woods. He’s about to demonstrate the alien nature of his being.

Benrey makes a little noise and Gordon glances back to him, only to catch a few orbs of sweet voice, slipped out from behind a hand clasped over the mouth. Gordon reaches over and touches one, wanting to _understand._ The moment his fingers meet it, he’s washed over by a deep sense of someone else’s melancholy. The kind of sadness that happens when you’re caught off guard, a longing, a deep, bone-aching longing and so much love. So much unrestrained appreciation and love and at the same time _sadness. Fear._ Gordon already knows Stitch will fight to keep his found family, and Benrey’s eyes look too wet for comfort. He's bottling it up, trying to school his features. Hand holding his mouth shut. So Gordon bends the arm over Benrey’s shoulder to hold the side of his head and tilt it over. The chullo’s a bit in the way but he ducks down to kiss Benrey’s forehead, whispering, “You’re family now, yknow?” He’s not sure where it comes from but he knows he’s not lying.

Benrey looks up at him like he’s been caught, eyes huge and definitely glistening- and then he snorts snot back into his nose.

“God, you’re disgusting,” Gordon wrinkles his nose but lets Benrey practically climb onto him to watch the rest of the movie from his place hidden against Gordon’s chest.

Joshie’s difficult to put to bed as he keeps making _pewpewpewpew_ noises, pretending to be an alien, running up and down the stairs. Soon joined by a recovered Benrey, enabling the late-night mania. Gordon sighs and leaves them to it for a while, cleaning up the room. He’ll drive Joshie to school tomorrow and his mom will pick him up. Routine. He sings to Joshie again, after the books, and Benrey’s shadow lurks in the hallway, listening in. God, Gordon hates feeling like people are waiting for him, and so he calls out for Benrey to come over, since he’s here anyway.

Benrey pokes his head in guiltily and needs to be told twice that it’s okay to approach. He sits at the foot of Joshie’s bed too, pupils blown in the dim nightlight's glow. He waits and listens until he joins too. Benrey sings, not words, but the melody, letting a calm blue wave of sweet-voice wash over the ceiling. They harmonize on accident and soon Joshie’s asleep, lulled by the lights and the song, and Gordon ushers Benrey out of the room.

“Not cool to call me out for eaves-droppy like that bro,” Benrey brushes his teeth by Gordon’s side, “Rude, yknow?”

“You like my singing, I get it,” Gordon teases him, shoving his shoulder a bit and getting shoved back.

"Nah I don't, you sound like goats."

"Relax, I won't bully you for totally liking my very cool lullabies. You're safe, I can’t even make gay jokes against you now.”

“Why not?” Benrey looks suspicious.

Gordon sighs, dropping the bit, “We sleep in the same bed, that’s like. Immediate shut-down for any joke. I call you gay for listening to me sing and you call me out for letting you sleep in my bed. Like. I really can’t win, yknow?”

“When you put it like that,” Benrey shrugs.

He sings to Benrey too, quietly, facing away from him this time. Benrey, per promise, plays with his hair. This is easier to do when it’s dark and they’re in a safe, closed room under the covers, like this doesn’t have to exist outside, in the daytime. Makes it easier to turn, facing Benrey, only to whisper, “I meant that thing about family, You belong here.” It’s quiet and he’d never say this any other time. Or maybe he would. At this point, Gordon realizes, maybe he would.

Benrey does tear up then, and when he’s latched onto Gordon, not really crying, but close, he says, “Never had a home, yknow?”

And he sings, sweet voice directly into Gordon’s chest, and Gordon suddenly comes to share the same feeling. The feeling of overwhelming relief and that euphoric exhaustion, the one you get at the end of a sprint, crossing the finish line of a marathon and realizing you want to lie down. How were you running for so long? How did you make it? Now, when you have the space to stop and rest, you can’t imagine having run so far. But you’ve done it. And Gordon shares it, understands it.

Takes longer to fall asleep that night, but it’s worth the fuss.

Joshie’s sleepy the next morning, sluggishly protesting against going to school. But he eats his apple slices and moves on to tell Gordon about his dreams. Aliens and glowing lights. Gordon dreamt of glowing lights too.

Joshie demands Owl City in the car and Gordon obliges, already looking forward to getting bullied about it once Benrey sees it on a playlist later. He texts Kate that Joshie’s been dropped off at school. He drives home with a smile on his face. Home’s warm, there’s a coffeemaker at home. Softer pajama clothes. Benrey.

He crashes back to sleep, torturing a sleepy Benrey with how cold his hand and feet are post-outside. Benrey kicks him a few times, telling him to fuck off, before rolling away with the blankets, mumbling that Gordon doesn’t deserve any- before effectively rolling himself off the bed. Gordon spends a good few minutes laughing about it, to the point of hiccups. It then takes _another_ few minutes to coax Benrey out of pouting and into sharing the blankets again, tolerating Gordon's hold hand when it loops around him. They fall back asleep for a few hours, after which Gordon’s second alarm goes off- only to be inexplicably silenced by Benrey without moving.

It’s good. He’ll cook lunch and do more work for Mesa today and then let Benrey drag him into multiplayer on something. Or maybe he’ll drag Benrey into Minecraft. It’s getting cold and Benrey digs through his closet for layers.

Two days later, Benrey’s nerfed his alarm again. So instead, Gordon’s woken up by a phonecall. He’s about to be upset with the early disturbance when he spots the time: past noon. Right. Reasonable to call someone past noon- Gordon begrudgingly answers, flopping back into bed, feeling Benrey’s arms snake back around him, half-asleep.

He clears his throat, “Hey, Kate, what’s up?”

“Oh were you sleeping? Gordon?” She smiles audibly, snickering, “Do you know what time it is?”

He chuckles back, “Thought it wasn’t obvious, yeah. Everything okay?”

“Oh, yeah, just calling to see if you’d like to grab lunch today or something. Or, well, dinner.”

“Hm, sure, what’s the occasion?”

“Catch up. Plus, you promised me gossip on your new housemate. Joshie won’t stop talking about him anyway, so I’d _love_ to hear about, uh, Bemy.”

“Benrey,” Gordon corrects automatically, after months of people mistaking Benrey’s name for an honestly baffling amount of alternatives.

Hearing the name seems to wake Benrey at least partially, eyes barely open, “Whuh? Whaddya the fuck you want?”

Katelyn makes a bunch of noises on the other end of the phone, “Gordon, is that him? He’s with you right _now_?”

“Kate-”

“Weren’t you just asleep? In bed?” She’s laughing now, “Say hi for me, I’ll text you the dinner details.”

“Fuck off.” Gordon sighs and she’s hanging up, laughing more. He’s gonna have to take some fucking leaps to explain any of this. Of this. Right. He turns to smother Benrey with the blanket a bit, prompting surprised laughter and light wrestling.

He drives to meet Katelyn, dressed better than usual, because she’s picked a decent restaurant. Joshie’s staying over at his grandparent’s for a few hours so they have a meal and an evening to enjoy. Sitting down with her, he’s fully aware that, in another universe, they could’ve been married right now. If they didn’t meet mid-college and didn’t get a kid almost just as early. But they aren’t, and maybe they’re both doing better because of it. She’s nice, fun, sharp, and quick, but they’d tried living together before and it never worked out. Both too hot-headed to coexist for long. In moderation. They’re good in moderation. This dinner will be good but they also won’t talk too much after it, not until the next Joshua hand-over.

They order food, and the way she’s eyeing him, he knows there’s no side-stepping it, “Fine, not even gonna talk about the weather with me?”

She folds her hands, grinning and hungry for gossip, “Weather can wait, I want to hear about Ben…rey?”

“Yeah, Benrey.” Gordon sighs, “What about Benrey?”

“Everything about Benrey, actually. How’d you two meet? What’s going on now?”

“Nuthin, uh, we met through work. He kinda needed a place to stay after… everything-” the main public doesn’t know what happened, only knows that there was an explosion at the isolated facility. That’s all Kate knows too. It gives Gordon a good reason to be missing an arm. “So he ended up rooming with me, and just uh, didn’t leave.”

“He’s not holding you hostage is he,” she jokes but he can hear a serious question underneath it, and the insanely defensive wave that crashes through him makes Gordon look away and cross his arms.

“He’s uh, he used to be kind of an asshole, back when we met, but I think everyone was stressed and bitter…But now that we got to like, recover and stuff…” Gordon stares at his glass of water, “He’s cool now, he helps me cook and he uh watches movies with me and lets me talk at him about physics. I think Joshua likes him too, but uh, he’s just a roommate- well, not really-” it’s hard to talk about things he hasn’t thought through before, “I don’t know. He’s a roommate and I really like living with him, like, he’s pretty chill and I feel like he’s actually trying to be nice now, so we’re good. We uh, both had a bad time at Black Mesa so we, um, get nightmares sometimes?” He picks at the tablecloth, “So we uh, share a bed. It’s nice, he’s weird about affection sometimes but I think it makes him feel better. He makes me feel better too, yknow? Makes me laugh.”

God, she didn’t even fucking ask about all that huh- Gordon cringes, he’s been itching to talk about it no wonder-

He’s waiting for teasing, anything really, but when he looks at her again, she’s smiling softly.

It makes him bristle, “What?”

“I’m just glad you’ve got someone to watch your back,” she leans her elbows on the table, cushioning her head, “I guessed you had someone staying over when you started sounding… alive on the other end of the phone. Movies playing in the background.”

He can’t deny how much Benrey’s helped in the recovery process. Even after… how much of the _damage_ process he was involved in back at Mesa, “I think I’m glad to have him too.”

“You’re blushing.”

“I’m not blushing,” he turns away and drinks his water, “Whatever.”

“Well, I’d love to meet him someday, whoever it is that’s making you finally take care of yourself. Plus, Joshie’s enamored by him. I was expecting another two hour rant about the dinosaur documentary they watched at school, but no. Instead, two hours of talking about your housemate. Just so much to say about, uh, Benrey..?”

“Yeah, the name’s weird,” Gordon laughs, relaxing a little, “What’s Joshie been saying?”

“It’s like he loves him more than the two of us combined,” Kate jokes as their food is served, “He’s been going on and on about his um, singing, and about how he’s really good at games and at running around on all fours. Unlike you, apparently.”

They laugh and soon move on to other topics, like schooling plans and then Kate’s interior design projects, and she lets him steal food out of her plate. It’s so _normal,_ he’s amazed he’s here. That he’s made it this far back into some semblance of stability.

They’re walking around after dinner, enjoying the sunset, when Gordon’s phone rings, the ghostbuster tune starting up from within his pocket. Kate has a chance to catch a look at his screen, which proves highly disastrous, as the contact clearly says: Baebrey with a bunch of hearts (Benrey’s doing).

He tries to shoot Kate a warning glare and picks up, “Yo, what’s up?”

“Where do we keep the chad lighter?”

“The- you mean the grill lighter? It’s in the bottom right cupboard.” Gordon wrinkles his brow, hearing Benrey move to dig through the kitchen. “Do you see it?”

“Whuh- yuh, uh huh-” this is followed by faint clicks of the lighter being tested. “Thankes.”

Gordon can feel Kate staring at him intently, “Yeah, take care, put it back after you’re done I don’t want Joshie finding it. Love ya buy.”

“Love you too.”

Gordon hangs up and pockets his phone, taking too long to notice Kate isn't following. He turns to meet her raised eyebrows, and is about to question it, when the reality of what he’d said catches up like a bullet.

They end up spending ten minutes on a park bench, Gordon’s head in his hands as she rubs his back and tries to console him without snickering.

“You know,” Gordon sits hunched over, staring at leaves on the ground, “I didn’t even ask him why he needed that lighter.”

“You go home and find out then,” Kate gives him the most pitying look, patting him on the shoulder. “I’ll tell Joshua you said hi.”

The drive home is antsy as hell. Like that time he’d returned from IKEA with a permanent (now unused) bed. Just _more._

Benrey hadn’t texted him, hadn’t called back. For all Gordon knows, Benrey could’ve completely missed it too and was currently oblivious to the word soup blunder. Or, maybe, he’s at home right now with his dumb grill lighter, also feeling his face burn, chewing on his hoodie strings, turning the phrase over and over in his head. Gordon frowns at ‘also’. It’s not like _he’s_ at the wheel, feeling his face burn and chewing on his lip. Turning the phrase over and over in his head.

He’s gonna fucking hyperventilate.

Gordon pulls the car over, shakily remembering to use his blinkers, and sits back, staring at the darkening skyline. God. There’s a certain something in his head he’s refusing to confront. Refusing to admit. He watches cars pass him, some drivers glancing over to check if he’s okay, and honestly, he isn’t. Zoning out in the car seat, Gordon feels ready to shake out of his skin, like he’d been electrocuted and the energy didn’t leave his body, remaining to circulate his bones and make him want to get up and sprint.

He unlocks the car door too fast and stumbles out, dragging in the cold biting air, circling his car once, twice, to try and get that jitteriness out of his legs. More cars pass, headlights, headlights, it’s getting darker early now, and Gordon tips his head back, watching the dark expanse- _there’s nothing out there-_ of stars. Stars, stars, and he closes his eyes, leaning his head against the cool metal of his car’s roof, careening back almost. It’s chilling and uncomfortable but he feels calmer, feels finally right to face the little, yet overwhelming truth, that’d been sitting in the back of his head, from the moment he misspoke over the phone:

Saying it hadn’t felt wrong. 

When he gets back in the car, there’s signs of his family everywhere. He knows his car isn’t _cool_ and it sure as hell screams of dad energy. The interior too. In and out. Benrey’s rubix cube left in the bottle holders, one he knows how to solve and doesn’t bother to, preferring to endlessly fidget with it and click around when riding shotgun. Joshie’s forgotten comics. An empty lunchbox that hasn’t been used since Joshie got a new robot-themed one. Benrey’s replacement helmet occasionally rattling around in the back on steeper turns. They’re his family, huh. He starts the car.

It’s been years. Since the last time Gordon could see his houselights wink warmly at him as he drove closer. It’s a peculiar feeling, knowing where your house is and seeing it greet you with yellow light from the windows. Benrey has an issue with leaving all the lights on if at least one of them is home, but Gordon does too, so it’s not really a problem. Like a beacon at sea, the feeling of someone waiting for him at home draws Gordon in.

The first thing he notes, upon unlocking the front door, is the unmistakable smell of pastry. The second is a mess of flour and batter smothering the kitchen counters. The third’s Benrey.

Benrey owns enough clothes at this point to make stealing Gordon’s inexcusable, but that’s yet to be brought up. Now he’s there in sweats, no hat, and a Jurassic park tee with its graphic slowly wearing off. He leers at Gordon from the couch, “Still having dinners with your ex? Pathetic.”

“Yeah shut up man,” Gordon can’t find it in himself to mean it, and only smiles, removing his shoes and coat, “What’s cooking?”

“Finish the phrase.”

He straightens back up from the shoe rack and sighs, leveling Benrey with his most unimpressed stare, making sure he sounds like he’s chewing on lemons, “Good looking.”

Benrey pumps his fist and hoots from the couch as Gordon goes to change in his bedroom- their bedroom? His bedroom.

He opens the closet and sees Benrey’s shirts up there mixed in with his.

Fine.

Their bedroom.

He changes as quickly as he can, eager to go back downstairs and… do what? See Benrey. Spend time with Benrey. Clean the fucking kitchen.

Benrey’s moved from the couch, and Gordon notes the discarded Call of Duty and Stitch disks lying around the TV. He’ll need to order Benrey one of those stitch-ear hats, he thinks.

“What’s uh. What was the grill lighter for?” Gordon dreads bringing up the phone call at all, but maybe it’s not dread. Maybe it’s the same trepidation of a bungee jumper’s first fall.

“Cookies.” Benrey’s staring at the oven, hands in his pockets, slouching a bit.

Okay, maybe not his first fall. Gordon’s dated a bunch of people, crushed on even more- he’s got a kid for fuck’s sake. But he’s almost thirty now and out of college and it’s just different. You don’t find yourself falling in love with random classmates who’ve only ever looked at you once. So no, this isn’t his first fall, but the buzzing adrenaline in his chest is as fresh as ever. And for what? Only for the simple act of coming up behind Benrey and looping arms around his middle? Resting his chin on Benrey’s head?

Benrey jumps a bit, knocking Gordon’s teeth together, but it’s worth it the moment Benrey’s hands come up to hold onto the back of Gordon’s, one starting to trace seam lines along Gordon’s prosthetic.

“You made cookies?” Gordon can feel Benrey melting a bit, defeating the purpose of resting a chin on his head.

The oven ticks, fifteen minutes away from what Gordon can see.

“Huh?”

“You made cookies?”

“Yeah, but evil.” Benrey shrugs, “Toxic sludge.”

“I’m sure they’ll be… edible. What’s the occasion?” The room does smell good though, no traces of burning or smoke.

Benrey shrugs again, fidgeting with Gordon’s arm harder, tapping on it. “Just thought.” He’s clearly jittery and Gordon can relate on an unreal level, soaking up Benrey’s warmth and the pleasant buzz of holding him, “Thought, yknow.”

No elaboration follows and Gordon just hugs him a bit tighter, “Um, sure. Thanks. Thank you, I haven't had home-baked stuff in a while, this is really-” god, Benrey really did bake cookies, huh. Without being prompted or asked to. He just went and baked cookies and knew where everything was in the kitchen – or most of everything- “that’s uh, really sweet of you.” _I love you._ And there, he wants to say it again, tag it on at the end, just say it, just spit it out, it feels like he’s drowning to say it- “I love cookies.” Chickens out. Fuck this.

“What monster doesn’t.” Benrey smacks his lips again, “Clean the kitchen?”

Gordon snorts, “You telling _me_ to clean the kitchen?” he straightens back up, letting go of Benrey, “Just, gonna make _me_ clean it? Not even gonna help a _little_?”

“Boooo,” Benrey turns to face him- definitely blushing so that’s uh, yeah, “Everyone hates licking flour off the countertop. I don’t wanna.”

“I-” Gordon stops to giggle, high-strung on that free-fall feeling in his chest, “No one is asking you to do that, holy shit, c’mon.”

They begin to pick through the mess, transferring used kitchenware to the sink, and then working on the flour. Benrey hangs around more than being productive, but Gordon doesn’t bother calling him out. He’d made cookies after all, and also looks really cute dodging out of Gordon’s way as he moves around to wipe the counter. But as Gordon goes for another sweep of the flour, Benrey’s too late to get out of the way, and ends up getting elbowed- he makes a bunch of scandalized noise and the next thing Gordon knows, he's getting whapped in the head with a handful of flour.

“Benrey!” He’d love to remain serious, but he’s already laughing, trying to get it out of his hair, “I hate you.”

“I hate you too,” Benrey parrots with a grin, standing on the ready with another palmful of flour.

The phrase catches both off guard though, and they sober up, silence covering them like thin ice.

“The, uh, phonecall.” Gordon clears his throat, feeling traces of flour still on his face. Benrey looks back at him with one of the most stressed expressions he’d ever seen. He doesn’t dare breathe. Maybe things weren’t as … he hates the word, but, reciprocated. Maybe Benrey’s humor just revolves around hitting on Gordon and calling him hot and beautiful and strong and curling up in bed with him every night.

They both speak at the same time.

Benrey blurts, “I misspoke,” while Gordon creaks out, “I meant it.”

_Shit._

Gordon immediately feels his face heat up, probably worse than the oven- the sense of falling much worse now, like he’d glanced up and noticed he jumped without securing the bungee. Benrey panics too, “Wah- wuh-” overtaken momentarily by badly directed sweet voice. The orbs crash into Gordon with a wave of blinding confusion. It’s swirling fear, that feeling of keeping something in for too long, to the point of becoming attuned to its stressful nature- giving up _hope-_

“Wh- uh- the fuck?”

Gordon waves the other sweet voice orbs away, beginning the onset of a ramble, “Okay, I really want to _not_ face this situation head-on, but if I step away from it now I’m never gonna work up the courage to take another go, so like, I’m already really freaking out a lot, so like, I’d appreciate honesty- you misspoke?”

Benrey’s still glaring at him, but soon wrinkles his brow, looking away, “Words, s’like bad.”

“Uh-huh, yeah, uh, okay, if words are bad can I trust your sweet voice? I do already but I need to know this is uh- like-”

“Black Mesa Sweet Voice legally cannot lie.” Benrey’s boring holes into the floor with his eyes, hair rippling with a pink grid in place of its void-like color. He’s clenching his fists, one still full of flour.

“Okay- okay that’s good-” Gordon sounds like someone going insane, but he takes a step closer, “Okay, um, do you want to… show me then? Sing to like, make me understand?”

Benrey only tenses harder, but opens his mouth, painting a trail of sweet voice and directing it into the center of Gordon’s chest.

It’s more than the last one- still fear, clear, sharp fear that’s tied to a surprisingly coherent idea of losing things, of getting- Gordon connects the dots: of getting kicked out. Fear of losing what he’d come to love. Gordon can tell his own emotions are bleeding into it, bleeding into the fear of making this confession and getting shut down, turned away-

But once the first pangs of adrenaline-inducing fear wash off there’s so much more- Benrey’s still singing, and the colors shift, and there’s so much _good,_ there’s warmth and safety and genuine surprise- marveling at how peace like this can exist, and at how much that can matter- longing.

Bone-deep longing, like the sadder side of hunger. Longing to be understood and accepted and the memories of that going up in flames- coming to peace with love, loving someone from the side, with no expectation of it being returned-

Coming to peace with love.

Gordon only now notices he’s crying, the effect overwhelming, but so much more clear than the first time he’d felt sweet voice ever. He understands now, understands Benrey’s thoughts better- enough to not get lost in the waves of wordless concept being hurled at him. Enough to see past the turmoil and find the answer he’s looking for:

“Stop me if I got something wrong,” Gordon wipes tears off with his left hand, but lifts both to hold Benrey’s face, tilting it up, up, until he can lean down and cut the string of sweet voice off, wishing he had a way to wordlessly channel his own emotions back-

Best to try and pour it into the kiss.

It tastes like watercolor, that’s the best way he can put it, tastes like mellow, washed-out tones, and the AirHeads Mystery Flavor™ all together- he can feel Benrey’s hands claw into the front of his shirt and hold him there- the knowledge there’s flour on his shirt now- the kiss feels natural, like they’d, for once, managed to find something at the right pace. Benrey’s a funky kisser and definitely doesn’t use chapstick but it’s exactly Benrey, exactly what he’d been wanting to feel and do for- god, for so long. Back at the supermarket over those idiot carrots, that’s what he’d wanted, wanted to kiss Benrey over fucking vegetables. Roots. Whatever.

The oven pings and it’s like they’re electrocuted apart.

Benrey’s standing there with huge eyes, pupils blown- on the verge of crying maybe. But a huge grin- smile, this is genuinely a smile- spreads across his face and he takes a moment to try and rub the flush off his cheeks, at the same time lathering himself in residual flour. Gordon giggles before he even knows he’s doing it- and then they’re both laughing, elation, pent up energy, and worry all escaping into the kitchen ceiling and getting lost within the smell of bakery and the taste of love.

The cookies come out slightly burnt but surprisingly good, and when Gordon bites into one, it fills him with an unshakable sense of peace. A few are shaped as lewd things and he makes it clear he’s not eating any of them. The kitchen can be cleaned later. Now they lie on the couch and eat cookies, Benrey lying on top of Gordon with the controller, failing time and time again at a miniboss in Ittle Dew as he gets distracted for kisses. He’s supposed to be improving Gordon’s run at the game, as he’d ‘never play something like this’ by choice, but he’s not getting far, constantly drawn away from the screen as Gordon plays with his hair, combing it and braiding strands.

Holding each other in bed feels the same, the same sense of comfort and protection from the outside world. Gordon doesn’t know why he expects a change, but there isn’t one. Benrey just pecks him every few minutes like he’s dozing off and suddenly remembering he can do that now. He still smells like cookies and Gordon imagines him in the kitchen, rattling around, baking because he wanted to do something nice for Gordon, as tentatively explained between kisses and gameplay. Benrey in the kitchen, going through the drawers looking for a goddamn _grill lighter_ that’s still gone unexplained, but that’s okay. Benrey singing sweet voice into the batter, making his alien cookies that Gordon can marvel over later with both scientific curiosity and simple cookie-based adoration.

Benrey hangs onto him now, still dipping in and out of sleep, hair smelling of stolen shampoo, palms warm on Gordon’s back, breath warmer. His hair ripples with the pink grid again, eyes gently glowing each time he seems to blink back awake, reluctant to drift off. He’s beautiful in a weird way, only amplified by the unmistakable tranquility that’s softened his features. Softened his features from the stress-line ridden face that stared at him with empty eyes from the couch for days. But from the moment Gordon cooked him scrambled eggs forward, it's been uphill. Day by day, slowly, with each silly house rule revoked after it’d been hastily put in place out of fear.

Gordon holds Benrey, overwhelmed with the knowledge of how long he’d been in calm, homely love with him. For longer than he can name. It’s a big word and a bigger thing to admit, but he’s somehow left the freaking-out part somewhere long behind, before he’d even realized there was reason _to_ freak out at all. He shifts, carefully kissing Benrey’s forehead.

Benrey hums Gordon’s ringtone back.

“Beep. Hello?” Gordon snorts.

Benrey makes a non-descript noise before sighing, “I big heart subscribe you.”

“I love you too.”

Unconditionally, one might say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr, hmu, the link's in the notes of one of the other chapters <3 thx for reading Gay Content

**Author's Note:**

> thankeys for reading! ch2 coming soon my fellas   
> if you have gay things you wanna scream at me (like 👀👀 frenrey hcs bcs i might fuck around and write another fic) you can find me on tumblr [@22ratonthestreet](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/22ratonthestreet) where i also draw some other things so... uh...yeah


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